


Against All Explanation

by RunSquidling



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Awkward Flirting, F/F, First Dates, Fluff, Misunderstandings, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Relationship, Reminiscing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2018-12-15 13:56:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11807334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunSquidling/pseuds/RunSquidling
Summary: Hermione just really, really wants to know more about Luna, okay? There's nothing more to it. That would be ridiculous. Besides, she doesn't date stoners.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is floating around Tumblr, right?
> 
> _give me the fic where hermione spends 3 weeks agonizing over whether she can lower herself to date a stoner & then she finally puffs herself up and goes to luna and is like ‘i am willing to smoke weed… for you.. to make this work…’ and luna’s like ‘oh thats nice but i dont smoke weed’_ 
> 
> So, obviously, I had to get on that. :3

Hermione spent very little time in the common room in 8th year. People assumed it was because she had so many classes and so much homework that she needed to be in the library _all the time_ , and that was true, but also, Luna spent quite a lot of time in the library, and Hermione had recently developed an extraordinary, unprecedented, and unexplainable fascination with Luna Lovegood.

She was smart, and Hermione didn’t understand how someone so smart could believe in things like __nargles__  and __dirigible plums__ and __crumple-horned snorkaks__. Hermione herself had accepted a lot of strange and unbelievable things since entering the magical world, but Luna just… __believed__  in things. Part of her wanted to sit Luna down and explain how the world really worked, but another part of her just wanted to sit herself down in front of Luna and listen.

It should be easy to just go up to her and ask her to explain __crumple-horned snorkacks__  and such. Luna was by no means ashamed of her unbelievable creatures. But whenever Hermione thought about just __asking__  Luna, she was struck with a strange paralyzing terror, and although she’d ridden invisible death horses across England and robbed Gringotts and survived the final battle of Hogwarts, she just couldn’t do it.

So instead, she put herself in Luna’s way and silently hoped.  

A couple of times a day, Luna would float through the library, walking on her toes--in her bare feet towards the end of the semester, as she always seemed to lose her shoes right before exams--and humming softly to herself, drifting through the shelves with no apparent purpose in mind other than running her fingers over the spines, and then drifting out again.

Sometimes she would actually study, spreading her things out across the entire table, holding the book with her arms sticking straight out in front of her, her chin resting on her knees, making faces at the things she was reading as if they were fiction, though Hermione would sometimes find the books after Luna put them back (which Luna wasn’t supposed to do, but she always put them in the right places, so Madam Pince never did anything but give Luna a narrow-eyed stare) and read them herself, but they seemed like perfectly ordinary schoolbooks to her.

She didn’t understand, and she __wanted__  to understand, and putting herself in Luna’s way wasn’t working, so one day when Luna was studying, she sat down at Luna’s table and laid out her books.

“Hermione?” Luna said, perplexed.

“Is it okay if I study here?” Hermione said, which came out entirely more hopefully than she’d meant to sound, and after a long stare, Luna nodded. Hermione turned to her books, but she could feel Luna’s eyes on the back of her neck.

“You have rummingtons nesting in your hair,” Luna said after a while, and Hermione looked up. Luna was staring at Hermione’s hair.

“Do I?” Hermione said. It was an effort to suppress the urge to inform Luna that rummingtons didn’t exist. She wanted to understand how Luna worked, she reminded herself, and insulting her was not going to help.

“They’re quite rare.” Luna’s eyes were bright, her book entirely forgotten. “Would it be alright if I said hello?”

“Um… sure.”

Luna reached out, and Hermione sat stock-still as Luna’s long fingers carded through her hair. “Hello,” Luna said, wonderingly, and then took her hand back and smiled her book. “Thanks,” she said.

“Anytime,” Hermione said, and the next day, Hermione found out that Luna could take things quite literally, because as soon as she sat down, Luna pulled a chair up behind Hermione and tucked her feet underneath herself and started telling Hermione’s hair about what she’d learned that day, often running her fingers through it while she talked.

“They like learning,” she told Hermione, after she’d done this several times. “That’s probably why they picked you to nest on.”

Hermione felt oddly flattered by this. She also took notes on the things Luna said, and cross-referenced them later. About thirty percent of it was verifiable. The rest of it was at least enjoyable to listen to, and Hermione quite looked forward to Luna’s appearance in the library. It felt very nice, studing while Luna talked to her hair.

Some of what she said was extremely funny. Other times, she would get very serious, like she was talking to a real friend, and once, Luna had rested her head on the back of Hermione’s shoulder and told the rummingtons how much she missed Olivander, and how sad she was that he seemed to find owling her too painful these days.

Hermione had sat quite still, staring down at her half-written arithmancy paper, ink drying on her quill. She wasn’t very good with feelings, not really. She knew how to explain them to louts like Harry and Ron, but when it came to actually giving support, or comfort, or anything besides very clinical and well-researched advice, she was absolute rubbish. But Luna didn’t seem to expect anything. She just ran her fingers gently through Hermione’s hair, jaw moving against Hermione’s shoulder as she talked softly to the rummingtons. It was hard, listening to Luna talk about what had happened in the cellar. It was bringing up feelings Hermione did not at all like.

“I didn’t even ask for the wand, you know? He sent it to me entirely on his own, and I rather thought we’d keep owling, we became quite good friends in that basement, but he’s-”

She couldn’t handle the feelings. Just thinking about that place, it was too much, she didn’t want to deal with this, and she opened her mouth to tell Luna to stop but instead what came out was, “Bellatrix tortured me,” and this was an entirely inappropriate moment, and entirely inappropriate person, why was she telling Luna for Merlin’s sake, and now she was sad and helpless and terrified because that’s what happened every time she tried to talk about it. She pushed it down, as usual, because it was not __relevant__ , it was __over__ , she did not have to feel that way anymore, she was done-

Luna stopped talking, and turned her head so her face was pressed to Hermione’s shoulder, rocking it back and forth for a moment. Hermione felt a pull in her hair, not quite enough to hurt, just enough to make her feel like Luna was __holding on__ to her. It occured to Hermione that Luna had probably heard her screaming.

The horrible, crushing __feeling__ rose up, pressing against her eyes, too big for her skin and too fast to run away from, and she closed her eyes and took a few long, slow breaths, her body watchspring tight, waiting for it to go away. Luna rubbed her face against Hermione’s shoulder and held on to her hair and waited with her.

When she opened her eyes, Luna’s long, odd fingers were holding something in front of her. It looked like a rolled-up bit of cellophane, but it had a glittery-golden sheen and was really strikingly pretty. Hermione took it gingerly. Luna was not known for recognizing dangerous things. It did not, however, blow up in her fingers, so, expecting an explanation, she held it.

Luna did not explain. She just nuzzled Hermione’s shoulder again, and finger-combed her hair, and told the rummingtons about a moon of Venus that Professor Sinistra had told her did not exist but Luna knew that was only because it was hiding behind the planet and couldn’t be seen.

Blood pounding in her ears, Hermione dipped her dry quill into the inkpot, and tried to continue her essay. She really did not understand what had just happened, nor why she desperately hoped Luna would keep resting her head there, and wouldn’t move on from the ridiculous, nonsense, entirely made-up rummingtons any time soon.

It took her about a week to figure out that she fancied Luna.

It was extremely disturbing. She didn’t mind fancying a girl, per se; she’d read all about human sexuality when she was thirteen and started having rather startling dreams, so she understood how these things worked, including the apparent fluidity of female sexual orientation. It’s just, it was __Luna__. Luna Lovegood, who hummed to herself in the halls and thought (quite accurately, but Hermione was staunchy offended anyway) that Hagrid was a terrible teacher and believed so readily in things that definitely did not exist.

And who held on to her when she was scared. And gave her what turned out to be dried sheets of an extremely poisonous algae that the Quibbler erroneously, but charmingly, reported to be the eggshells of the ghosts of mollusks--quite rare and valuable, apparently. And who might, just possibly, be using the rummingtons as an excuse to talk to her.

At least, Hermione hoped so, because this crush was nonsense and illogical and extremely powerful and starting to become a problem. She was having difficulty paying attention in class because she was fantasizing about what Luna’s hair felt like. She’d stopped taking notes in Binns’ class entirely, and spent the whole time writing out increasingly absurd confessions which always ended in things that made Hermione turn red and Vanish the parchment before anyone else could notice it. She’d accidentally transfigured a pig into an obviously Ravenclaw bed, to McGonagal’s raised eyebrows--the pig hadn’t been intended to become a bed at all, let alone a Ravenclaw one, and Hermione’s face reddened further as McGonagal gave her extra homework for the first time ever.

She’d just about gotten up the courage to ask Luna if she might possibly consider going for a walk around the lake sometime, when she saw Luna doing what she could only assume were __Muggle recreational drugs__ in the courtyard. Hermione was looking out a window from three floors up, so admittedly she couldn’t see very well, but even so it was quite obvious what she was doing. The stream of smoke was visible even from here. She kept bringing her hands up to her mouth. And after several minutes, Luna stood up and spun in a few wobbly circles, and then wandered back into the castle in strange zig-zags.

Sure, she mightbe smoking cigarettes, but cigarettes didn’t explain how __weird__ Luna was, and weed… weed did.

Oh, dear.

Hermione sank into the bench by the window. She felt disappointed and upset and angry at herself for feeling that way, because she had read all about marijuana after an extremely memorable experience with some of her Muggle friends, and knew perfectly well that it was harmless. But she just didn’t like the idea of stoners. Didn’t at all like the idea of fancying one.

But it was __harmless__.

But it was __bad__.

Sometimes, Hermione wished she could let go of stupid rules as easily as Ron and Harry could. It really wasn’t fair. This rule was demonstrably stupid, but she couldn’t shake it. Instead, she avoided it, mainly by avoiding Luna. She didn’t want to deal with this. She also found that it was impossible to study in the Gryffindor common room; not only was it as boistrous as it had always been, but the inhabitants were no longer used to leaving her alone, and she finally snapped at Lavender to go away and let her study, and felt terribly guilty about it.

Harry and Ron, of course, didn’t notice anything was wrong, but provided welcome distractions by needing far too much help with their homework.

Ginny, however. Ginny noticed.

“What’s going on?” Ginny asked, plonking herself down at Hermione’s table and steadfastly ignoring the glare Hermione shot her. Ginny had never much cared when Hermione wanted to be left alone.

“Nothing,” Hermione snapped, leaning over her arithmancy book in a clear sign to __go away__. This week’s runes were very complicated and she did not need distractions.

“This has nothing at all to do with rummy-whatsits, then?”

Stupid __Ginny__ and her stupid __knowing things__  and her imecilic __beings friends with absolutely everyone__.

“No.” Hermione was losing hope that being short and firm would work. Ron and Harry (if they’d even noticed in the first place) would have left in a huff by now, but Ginny was unphased at best. She might even have a spark in her eyes that Hermione entirely did not trust.

“Because Luna has been asking after you like, every day. Today she went into a bit of a __story__ about some kind of creature nesting in your hair, and I tell you, she looked a bit mad. Madder than usual. And __sad__.”

“Sad?” Hermione said, despite herself, not looking up from the book. The runes were absolutely meaningless. She’d been reading this page for fifteen minutes.

“You’ve been floating around like you’re in love for weeks now, and suddenly you’re moping, and Luna starts asking about you every day? Come on now, Hermione.”

Hermione rested her elbows heavily on the table and sank her fingers into her hair, letting it cascade around her face and shield her from Ginny’s knowing look. “I’m not in love,” she said, stubbornly.

“Sure, sure,” Ginny said. There was laughter in her voice and Hermione was __deeply annoyed__. “Look, Hermione, what happened? I thought this was cute until you got all sad, but I mean, seriously, Luna has no idea what she did. She’s really upset. Not that she’s said anything, but I can tell.”

“She’s upset?”

“Yeah. She likes you, Hermione. I don’t know what changed, she used to think you were really annoying, but…” Ginny shrugged.

Hermione’s fingers clawed in her hair. “Ginny… would you still want to ask someone out if you really, really liked them, but you didn’t understand why, and you knew it was insane to think it might actually work but you still want to __so badly__ , but then you caught them doing something… bad?”

“What kind of bad?”

“The kind of bad thing that’s not actually that bad but you can’t let go of the rules.”

Ginny’s fingers appeared in Hermione’s hair, parting it, and Ginny peered through the space, eyebrow cocked disaparagingly, and Hermione felt like an idiot.

“Oh my god __fine__ ,” Hermione muttered, dropping her face into her book and wrapping her arms around her head. “Fine, fine, you’re right, I’ll do it, now let me do my homework.”

Uninvited, as usual, Ginny gave Hermione a hug around the shoulders, and told her something encouraging that Hermione wasn’t listening to, and then finally, __finally__  left her alone. But it was too late. She couldn’t mope and ignore her problems anymore.

She had to talk to Luna.

#

She had to do it immediately, or she wouldn’t do it at all, so she tracked Luna down the next day in the Care of Magical Creatures section of the library. The books here were bound in all kinds of unusual leathers, and Luna liked to sit on the floor and touch the spines.

Hermione sat down next to her. “Luna. I have to tell you something.”

Luna, eyes narrowed, looked critically at her hair. “Your rummingtons are gone.”

Hermione’s chest constricted. “I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you.”

Luna shrugged and went back to touching the book spines.

“It’s just… I really like you. Like, __really__ like you. Like…” Hermione pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, sighing sharply. This was stupidly hard. She hadn’t had to tell Ron how she felt; he already knew, and he’d even been the one to figure out that things between them weren’t working, which she’d considered something of a miracle. She’d never had to actually __talk__  about her feelings before. Never had to risk being rejected. But Ginny was right and she knew she was right and if she didn’t say this __right now__  she never would.

She took a deep breath and blurted it out as fast as she could. “I don’t know if this is even something you’d consider, and maybe I should have asked this first, since it’s rather a critical point, but I’ve been agonizing over this for forever and I can’t really spare the time to ask the contingent question first, so, I’ll just say, if you’ve ever been amenable to dating girls, I’d quite like to take you out next Hogsmeade weekend.”

There was silence. Then a soft, strange __clunk__  sound, and a high-pitched whine. Hermione dropped her hands from her eyes and forced herself to look at Luna.

Luna had slumped forward and bonked her forehead against the books, her cheeks brilliantly red and a painfully wide grin splitting her face. The whine was coming from Luna. Perplexed, Hermione stared at her, until she figured out that the __whine__  was a very small __squeal__ , and then her own lips moved into a hesitant smile.

“So…?” Hermione prompted.

Luna shook her head and, still squealing, sat up and bonked her shouder hard against Hermione’s.

“Do we have to wait until next Hogsmeade weekend?”

“No,” Hermione said, her smile breaking into a full grin. It faltered, though, when she remembered the __other thing__ she had to address.

“And… um… I’m willing to… to smoke weed, for you, to… make this work,” she mumbled. Her hands were clenched tightly in her lap. She wasn’t entirely sure about this, but she was __entirely__  sure about Luna, and after all she had broken much bigger rules than this before.

Luna’s wide eyes blinked rapidly. “That’s nice.”

Hermione stammered, a bit of defensiveness rising in her chest; she was really not comfortable with this at all, and rather expected a bit more understanding or at least kind nonsense from Luna.

“Why do we have to smoke weed to make this work?”

At a loss for words, Hermione stared at Luna.

“Because I don’t mind,” Luna said hastily, though she looked a bit nervous. “It looks __uncomfortable__ , but I can manage _ _.__ ” Her eyebrows knitted and her eyes went unfocused. “Although this does make what’s going on between Davis, Perkins, and Rockshaw make entirely more sense.”

“No, Luna, no, it’s just… I’m just an idiot.” Relief flowed over Hermione like a Dissillusionment charm, and, hesitantly, she reached out and took Luna’s hand. Luna’s fingers were cool and gentle and closed around her own immediately, quite tightly, and Luna’s face broke into a pink-cheeked grin again.

“Let’s go for a walk around the lake,” Hermione said.

“If we wait until moonrise, the giant squid has a dance routine he likes to do when he thinks nobody’s watching,” Luna said excitedly, squeezing Hermione’s hand.

Hermione laughed. This was insane, and probably not going to work for long, but Luna made her chest feel full of puffskeins, and her touch made Hermione’s heart race, and she wasn’t at all willing to go the rest of her life without knowing what it felt like to kiss her. Even if this was incredibly unlikely to work and Hermione felt a bit crazy. It was __Luna__. Crazy things worked, when Luna was involved. 


	2. Chapter 2

“By the way, what _were_  you doing?” Hermione asked by the lake’s edge, watching for squid tentacles but (not unexpectedly) seeing nothing so far. “In the courtyard?’

Luna looked at her quizically, and Hermione explained, and Luna nodded sagely. “My hands were cold,” she said, as if this explained everything in the world, and also, as if mistaking cold hands for smoking weed was completely normal and expected. Hermione had come to quite appreciate that about Luna. Nothing was ever too weird for her. 

“But the smoke…”

Luna looked pensively into the distance, blonde curls floating in the breeze like an ethereal mist. Hermione’s heart rose into her throat. She didn’t want to be anywhere else. __This is crazy__ , she thought, her hand reaching hesitantly for Luna’s. Luna’s fingers were cold.

“Are your hands cold a lot?”

“Most of the time.”

A frown was forming on Luna’s face, and Hermione, thinking it might be her fault, started to let go of Luna’s hand. But as soon as she started moving away, Luna’s other hand wrapped around the back of Hermione’s, holding her there.

“Smoke…” she murmured, and a second later, she barked a small, fox-like laugh, and smiled at Hermione. “My face was cold, too, so I set my eyebrows on fire. Just a little tickling one. Mine always comes out particularly smoky. I don’t know why. You thought I was __smoking__? Is that why you offered…?”

Hermione covered her face with her free hand, face heating uncomfortably. Of course Luna was just doing some weird Luna thing that only made sense to her. __Of course__. Had Hermione known Luna, tangentially at least, for five years, or not?

Luna’s hand left the back of Hermione’s.

“Next time,” Luna said, gently pulling Hermione’s hand away from her face. “Just ask. I’d have preferred that very much over being ignored for two weeks. I don’t have a lot of friends. It frightening when they act like I don’t exist all of a sudden. It feels like… like maybe I don’t. Exist.”

Guilt welled up in Hermione’s chest, crushing and tarry. She didn’t mean to do that to Luna. She wasn’t always a very good friend; her standards were too high, and she was too blunt, and she tended to pull away from people when she was upset--and she had no evidence to suggest that she’d be any better at being a girlfriend. But she wanted to be. She wanted to be good to Luna.

“I won’t do it again,” she promised, tilting her head forward, her forehead resting against Luna’s. She could feel Luna’s racing heart in their joined hands, and she knew Luna could feels hers, but it was too soon to lean forward that last couple of inches, it was just… too soon. That’s what Hermione told herself, at least. It was possible she was just too nervous to move.

But she was a Gryffindor. If Luna was still interested, which all evidence suggested she was, Hermione’s nerves wouldn’t get the better of her for long.


End file.
